I wrote a line like this diff fileA.txt fileB.txt | grep -v "^[11,12d9]" . Without the grep part, the output would look like this:
1d0 < loop 11,12d9 < polo < pool But with grep, the output would look like this:
< loop < polo < pool I think that grep -v is kind of like reverse search. But I don't understand the ^[11,12d9] part, what does it do?
grep -v "^[11,12d9]"
yes, as you found out -v is used for invert match and will return lines that do not match the given pattern ^[11,12d9].
and what ^[11,12d9] is doing is that saying match characters in [...] and if they were appeared at the begging of a line (^ is the beginning of the line anchor) then ignore those lines (since of used -v invert match);
so basically lines that started with one of 1, ,, 2, d or9 characters will be ignored (repeated characters also will be ignored within character-class).
but if you would like to ignore the line starting with string 11,12d9, you need grep -v '^11,12d9'.
*Not relevant to the question but to keep notes about use of ], ^ and - characters within character class:
if ^ character: it can be placed anywhere in [] but not the first character; if it was first character, it acts as negation on the characters within that class.
if ] character: it should be the first character.
if - character: it should be the last character.
-vis not reverse search (it does not read the file/stream backwards). It is a inverted filter (find those that don't match).